Spoiler Warning: Orphan: First Kill

After over a decade of waiting, Orphan fans finally got to see the prequel Orphan: First Kill. The film follows Leena Klammer (Isabelle Fuhrman) as she breaks free from the Saarne Institute, a psychiatric facility in Estonia, and escapes to America by posing as the missing daughter of a wealthy family. Fuhrman is joined by Julia Stiles as Tricia Albright, Rossif Sutherland as Allen Albright, Hiro Kanagawa as Detective Donnan, and Matthew Finlan as Gunnar Albright in the new installment.

There were several concerns when the film was announced, including how they planned to make Fuhrman look younger using old-school techniques. Rather than being a ten-year-old playing a ten-year-old, she’s in her twenties playing a child. Body doubles, platform shoes, and creative camera angles made sure the actress could come back and reprise her role.

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Director William Brent Bell noted the film wasn’t going to move forward without a “great twist.” While the team hyped up the film’s twist, with Bell commenting he enjoyed it even though he was looking for it, in the lead-up to the release, it almost ruined the film.

The Twist Came Too Early

     Paramount Pictures

Unlike most third-act twists, this one came about halfway through the movie, making it a solid second-act one. It’s revealed that Tricia and Gunnar are responsible for the original Esther’s disappearance. Tricia said her son had been too rough with her, and it was “too late” for her to help her daughter by the time she knew. Tricia covered everything up to protect her son, ensuring the only child she had left wouldn’t be sent away. It would be odd for Esther, freshly returned from being kidnaped, to go missing again, so Leena and Tricia continue on as if nothing has changed.

The three grow suspicious of each other, which becomes the entire premise of the second half of the film. Leena tries to push them into the path of an oncoming train after Tricia attempts to poison her with dinner, which Leena knew about because she fed the food to a rat that lived in a vent in her room. In an act of retaliation, Leena gives Tricia a smoothy containing the dead rat. The final act comes when the two Albrights decide to kill Leena, staging it as a self-inflicted death. This does not go according to plan, and everyone but Leena dies as the house goes up in flames.

While the reveal worked with the events that followed, it did feel like the film dragged for a bit because the surprise twist came at the halfway point instead of during the final act. While it made up for it with the ending, if the decision hadn’t been made by Gunnar and Tricia to kill Leena, the twist would’ve ruined the film and given it no direction. That said, because there were only a handful of ways the plot could go after the reveal, the twist did make the movie feel a touch predictable.

It Didn’t Feel Like a Twist

While it felt like a surprise at the moment, looking back, it didn’t quite feel like a twist in the same way that Leena’s true identity was revealed in the original film. There was always something off with how Tricia and Gunnar reacted to the news that Esther had been found, something that couldn’t just be written off as an angsty teenage boy or shell-shocked mother. Once Detective Donnan figured out the DNA profiles didn’t match, it was only a matter of time before Leena’s heist was up. It wouldn’t make sense for the detective to tell everyone who she was at that point in the film, so they needed another way to explain someone knowing who Leena was now that the information was out there.

When you really think about it, this was the only way for the film to go. Orphan set the precedent that someone always figures out who Leena really is, and it would’ve felt fake if no one ever found out in First Kill. That makes it less of a twist and more of a necessary plot beat tied into a “twist” that is more about the real Esther and not about Leena.

But It Was What Orphan: First Kill Needed

Was it one of the few paths the plot could take? Yes. Was it as surprising as it could’ve been? No. But, it gave the film the life it needed. In doing a prequel, especially when the audience is already in on the secret, the struggle then becomes how to keep the premise interesting and engaging without dropping in information just for the sake of introducing something new.

We already knew she had a family that had previously died in a house fire. We already knew that she had escaped a facility in Europe. We didn’t know how she did it, but we knew it happened. Adding in that the family she was trying to infiltrate was responsible for their daughter’s death, meaning they knew from the moment Leena appeared she couldn’t be who she said she was, created an excellent game of cat and mouse (or rat) that, though slow at times, kept the audience on their toes. If the writers had done anything else, the movie wouldn’t have been as entertaining as it was.

Leena finally met someone willing to do all the same things as she was. While Kate (Vera Farmiga), the mother in the first film, was fine killing “Esther” to protect her kids, Tricia is willing to do it to protect her secrets and her kid.

While Leena’s journey has come to a close for the moment, we may be seeing more of her soon if Fuhrman has a say.